Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton dropped by Microsoft for a talk this past Friday as he was in town for a book signing (his new book Giving) and some conference. (see article). There are a lot of fun and interesting things that go on a Microsoft many of which involve important figures of our time so when I saw that Clinton would be on campus I jumped at the opportunity to see him speak.

Microsoft just finished the giving campaign where there is a push to give to charitable organizations to which Microsoft matches the donation. This year MS employees gave over $72M, and Bill Clinton came to essentially say thank you and talk about the importance of giving. One of the key messages that he had was that technology and the internet were key eneablers in allowing many of the people in the US to give. One interesting statistic he quoted was in regards to the recent tsunami where the US gave some huge amount of money to the people impacted by it, and that the median gift was somewhere around $60 and said that these smaller gifts by that many people wouldn't be possible without technology.

Clinton took a few questions from the audience of employees including one about what makes a good leader. His response to this (which I will not do justice), was essentially that a great leader understands the times that they are in and how the world around them impacts them and their decisions and the people that they are responsible for and also understands how the future will impact those decisions and people.

It was really interesting to get to see someone like Clinton come and talk in a relatively small setting like this. I feel honored and lucky to have been able to be a part of this and am excited to work at a company that can bring speakers like this to campus.